During recent years, airline and maritime travel have increased in record numbers, both commercially and privately, as well as in the armed services. A direct consequence of the increased travel over large bodies of water, such as oceans and lakes, has been a proportional increase in the number of maritime accidents which often result in persons stranded on the grand expanse of the water surface. Very few of these people are successfully rescued due to the difficulty in locating their bodies on the open ocean in daylight hours, let alone at night in which most rescue efforts are called off.
Up until now there have been three major features lacking in the "state of the art" emergency locating devices for persons lost at sea: (1) a device which is automatically deployed and sustained for an indefinite time; (2) a device which can be located from great altitudes and distances during both daylight and nighttime hours; and (3) an inexpensive simple device which can be supplied to all overseas traveller/enthusiasts and is not subject to electronic malfunctions.
My invention increases the likelihood of locating individual persons or life boats afloat at sea in an inexpensive, continuous manner, thus making the common traveler, worker, or water enthusiast more relaxed when separated from land.